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The Expulsion of Yemeni Workers from Saudi Arabia

1990–1991 · Middle East & North Africa

Displacement

Displaced

850,000

Estimates of Yemenis forced to leave Saudi Arabia in late 1990 and 1991 range from 800,000 to one million, roughly 8 per cent of newly unified Yemen's population; the figures come from Yemeni government returns, World Bank and IMF assessments of the remittance shock, and contemporary reporting including MERIP's 1993 survey. There was no registration of departures on the Saudi side, so the range reflects Yemeni receiving-side counts and estimates of the pre-crisis Yemeni workforce in the kingdom.

Share of the population affected

85%

of the Yemeni worker population resident in Saudi Arabia before the 1990 Gulf crisis, 1990

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What happened

For decades Yemenis had held a privileged position in Saudi Arabia, able to work and trade without the sponsorship required of other foreigners. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, newly unified Yemen took a position on the Security Council and in the Arab League that Riyadh treated as support for Iraq, and in September 1990 Saudi Arabia withdrew the exemption, requiring Yemenis to obtain Saudi sponsors within a month. Between 800,000 and one million Yemenis left or were expelled within months, together with their families, in one of the largest sudden labour expulsions of the period and a close parallel to the simultaneous expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait. The effect on Yemen was severe: remittances and Gulf assistance worth roughly 1.7 billion dollars a year were lost, poverty rose from about 15 to 35 per cent of the population and unemployment from about 4 to 25 per cent on the figures reported by MERIP and by international financial institutions, tent settlements grew around Hudayda and other towns, and returnee grievances fed the riots of December 1992 and the tensions that produced the 1994 civil war. Saudi Arabia has repeated smaller mass deportations of Yemenis since, notably in 2013.

Parties

Saudi Arabia revoked the privileged residence status of Yemeni workers after Yemen's position in the Gulf crisis, forcing a mass return

Disputed

The total is a range rather than a count because no departure registration existed; how far the measure was a deliberate political sanction rather than a general tightening of labour rules is disputed between Saudi and Yemeni accounts.

The denominator

Yemenis had held a privileged status exempting them from the Saudi sponsorship (kafala) system, and estimates of the community on the eve of the crisis range from about 800,000 to 1.5 million including dependants. When the exemption was revoked in September 1990 after Yemen's position on the Kuwait crisis, roughly 730,000-850,000 returned to Yemen within months, a shock equal to about 7 per cent of Yemen's own population of some 11.9 million and costing it an estimated $1.7 billion a year in remittances.

Estimates of the resident community and of the number expelled overlap, so the ratio approaches 100 per cent by construction; measured against Yemen's population the return was about 7 per cent of the country.

Where the baseline comes from

Yemeni unification — Wikipediaopen-edited
Saudi Arabia–Yemen relations — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

There was no significant death toll from the expulsion itself, which was an administrative removal of residence rights rather than a violent operation; the consequences were economic, and the sharp rise in poverty is likely to have raised mortality in ways never measured.

Documented forms of violence

Denationalization

Contemporary reporting documented the sudden withdrawal of the legal status under which Yemenis had resided and worked, forcing departure; no other form is documented.

Movements mapped

Yemeni workers and families expelled from Saudi Arabia to Hudayda and the north850,000

Countries touched, on present-day borders

Yemen, Saudi Arabia

Sources

This entry rests only on reference, press or open-edited sources. Treat its figures as indicative and follow the links before relying on them.

MERIP, 'Yemeni Workers Come Home' (1993)press
Yemeni unification and the 1990-91 Gulf crisisopen-edited
Saudi Arabia-Yemen relationsopen-edited